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Stress relief, where are you?

I'm
on a daily treasure hunt for techniques to manage stress and achieve
peace of mind. I'm all too familiar with stress and its friend, anxiety,
and I don't like either one of them! If you're anything like I am,
you've spent a lot of time despising those dreaded "stressed out"
feelings. You know the ones: Swimming thoughts that can do laps around
any Olympian, the butterfly collection in your stomach, tidal waves of
heart palpitations, Niagara Sweat Falls, etc. The list goes on and on...

I've
also spent a lot of time trying to make these feelings go away. I've
done a lot of wishing and hoping to no longer be stressed and to be
self-assured and at ease with whatever comes my way. Oh, to be as cool
as a cucumber! Thus far, no one has figured out how to make stress
vanish. So, let's stop wasting any more time on trying to banish
stress. Let's manage stress. Unless you live in a bubble somewhere - and
even bubbles burst - there will always be stress. Instead, decide to
take on a new approach to stress. Rather than trying to make stress go
away, try to understand it - kind of like keeping your friends close and
your enemies closer.

Okay,
maybe "enemy" is too strong a word to describe stress. Maybe "frienemy"
is more accurate. At any rate, dealing with stress is like hitting a
patch of ice on the road. Your knee-jerk reaction may be to swerve to
avoid the ice only to spin out of control. A better approach is to take
your foot off the gas pedal. Take your foot off the brake, too. Face
the ice with fortitude and glide over it.

I'm lazy so I stopped setting the bar so high

I
admit I'm a pretty lazy person. I enjoy vegging in front of the TV. I
really love lounging around on a lazy Sunday. Knowing that I have to put
in effort to get what I really want seems daunting, at times. I think
most people can relate to this. Many people fail to achieve their goals,
whether it be a weight loss goal or a work goal, because they set the
bar too high. But, aren't we taught from childhood to set the bar high
for ourselves? Yes, we are. But, setting the bar too high often results
in quitting or not even getting started in the first place on achieving
our goals. So many of us have the misconception that working on goals
needs to be an all or nothing process.

Can the
perfection myth be tamed? I think so. As I've mentioned, I'm lazy. This
is what works for me. I've given up on setting the bar so high for
myself. So, I've decided to set the bar low. - so low that I'm
successful. To give you some examples, if someone were to tell me I
needed to exercise 30 minutes today, my knee-jerk reaction would be, "I
don't have 30 minutes to spare." But, if someone were to tell me I
needed to exercise for one minute today, I'd think, "Okay, I can do one
minute of exercise."

Why does this happen? People are
usually excited when they first get their new gym equipment. "This is
going to be the beginning of a new healthy lifestyle." A couple of weeks
into the new treadmill routine, and reality starts to set in. "I don't
have time to exercise today. I'll do it tomorrow." But, you know how the
story goes. Tomorrow never comes. Before you know it, that piece of gym
equipment is looking like the vestige of a sunken ship sprouting
barnacles.

This same thinking creeps in with so many
things we do in life. We either exercise for 30 minutes a day or not at
all. We either clean the whole house or not at all. We either complete
all our errands or none at all. You get the point. It's this "all or
nothing" thinking that tends to lead people down the path of
procrastination and failure.

I've fallen into this "all or nothing"
thinking many times. I call it the "Perfection Myth." We believe that we
have to complete things in a "perfect" way or not at all. I've had many
gym memberships that have gone to waste because of the perfection myth.
Just think of the all the home gym equipment collecting dust right now -
or, better yet, being used to hang clothes on.

Can the
perfection myth be tamed? I think so. As I've mentioned, I'm lazy. This
is what works for me. I've given up on setting the bar so high for
myself. So, I've decided to set the bar low - so low that I'm
successful.

To give you some examples, if someone were to tell me I
needed to exercise 30 minutes today, my knee-jerk reaction would be, "I
don't have 30 minutes to spare." But, if someone were to tell me I
needed to exercise for one minute today, I'd think, "Okay, I can do one
minute of exercise."

The
brain is very adept at picking up on patterns and creating "apps" to
help automate our thoughts and actions. By exercising for one minute
each day, the brain has the amazing ability to pick up on this new habit
and find other one-minute occasions for exercise. You can think of
lowering the bar in this way as setting up mini goals for yourself. Mini
goals are easily achieved and lend themselves to being done with more
consistency than big goals.

Exercising for only one minute will not
train my body for a marathon, but that's not what I'm looking for. In my
case, one minute of exercise is better than no minutes of exercise.

I
set mini goals for myself all the time, not just to manage stress, but
to manage almost everything. Another example is cleaning the house. Just
thinking about cleaning the house makes me tired. It's something I
would put off all the time until the house reached critical mass and
really needed attention. So, what I do now is clean the house in parts. I
don't have time to clean the entire house today, but I can manage to
clean the powder room. Tomorrow, I have time to clean some mirrors. The
next day, I may do a little dusting.

Setting
up mini goals can really protect you from really stressful situations
resulting from procrastination. Think about all the poor souls who put
off getting their tax info together until the eleventh hour. No one
likes to think about getting tax stuff together. Again, it's mostly
because we think we have to either get it all done today or not at all.
Guess what happens? Most people go for the "not at all" option but end
up doing it all when the pressure's really on. There is another option
available, a very simple one. Get some tax info together - not all the
required info, but some. I find that setting time limits is extremely
helpful. I don't want to work on taxes for hours on end, but I'm willing
to give 15 minutes. Setting mini goals with time limits is a surefire
way to beat procrastination.

Why am I saying all of this?
Because lowering the bar and setting mini goals is a great approach to
manage stress. People tend to believe they have to resolve all stressful
issues in their lives in order to be happy. I tended to feel this way
about my own shyness. I felt for so long that people are either outgoing
or they're not. I knew I definitely was not outgoing. I often wondered
what it would be like to feel self-confident and speak my own mind
without caring. Somehow I believed the notion that self-confidence had
to mean self-confidence to the extreme. A self-confident person should
feel confident no matter what the situation. That's why I resigned
myself to being shy for so long. I had the perfection myth deeply
instilled in my brain.

Over time, though, something wonderful happened. I started to give little public speeches on the topic of stress. When I first started doing this, I never gave much thought to how this was helping me. I would give my little talks and really enjoyed them. I got better and better at presenting classes to small groups, and my confidence grew exponentially. It dawned on me one day that I was accomplishing a lot through this mini step. I realized for me this was all I needed. To be confident didn't require me to deliver speeches to crowds of thousands. I wasn't doomed to being shy. I could let my voice be heard. I'm no Tony Robins. But, I realize now that I don't have to be anyone else but myself to be my best. I can optimize who I am and my unique assets.

So can you...

What I know is life goes up and down. Sometimes, we have a collection of little stressors that gnaw at us. At other times, we have major crises that bring us down. Then we have the periods of tranquility, during which some of us may actually worry about what's going to stress us out next! At any rate, we will always know stress in one form or another. It's better to do something to manage stress than to give up.

What kind of tools will you find to manage stress here?

Know-Stress-Zone.com offers a comprehensive guide to help you manage stress. You'll discover many techniques for harnessing the power of your thoughts so you can gain control. Not all stress benefits from a "calm down" approach. Relaxation techniques can be beneficial, but sometimes your stress might require more of an "energy releasing" or active approach. At other moments, we need a really good laugh to diffuse stress.

Not every technique works for everyone and every "body" to manage stress. The work involved in stress management comes in figuring out what helps YOU the most. Whatever works, works. The good news is that this really is a go-to site for finding the right fit for you. There are so many strategies to help manage stress here that you're bound to find the sweet spot.

Here you'll find a curation of the best of the best techniques, insights and products to help you manage stress. You'll learn effective strategies to manage stress such as diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, visualization, mindfulness, humor, exercise, healthy eating, aromatherapy, autogenic training, and hypnotherapy - just to name a few! You'll find easy access to all the stress relief products I have found to be great complements to the techniques I use to manage stress.

I like easy and quick methods to manage stress, so that's what you'll find here. As with anything else in life, habits get easier with practice. You can retrain your brain. You can do this!

Please join me at Know-Stress-Zone.com as we explore different ways of breaking down stress and really managing it so it doesn't break you down! Manage stress once and for all! As a person who knows stress, I'm always searching for new ways to deal with it, not just put up with it. Please visit often as I frequently add new information as I get hold of it. Let's manage stress today and take back control.

The development of this website has been a labor of love, with the intention of helping anyone struggling with stress and its related issues. I am excited to help as many people as I can in search of stress relief and look forward to being a small part of your journey.

Get Started! Manage Stress

Take some time exploring the different
tabs on this page. Pick one topic on how to manage stress and delve
into it. Try out a relaxation technique or read more about what stress
really is. Take a mini step today to manage stress, and you'll start to
feel better just knowing you're helping yourself.

Thank
you for taking the time to read this page all the way through! I know I
can be long-winded, at times. The fact that you've read all this speaks
volumes to your commitment to change the way you manage stress. Don’t
forget to sign up for your Free Stress Management Course and ezine, Know Stress Press!

The Starfish Story

You've probably heard this story before, but I really enjoy it every time I read it. I hope you will, too. Here it goes…

~
Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to
do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning
before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the
shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered
with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both
directions.

Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy
approaching. As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he
grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to
pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer still
and the man called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you
are doing?”

The young boy paused, looked up, and replied,
“Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the
beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth
replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them
back into the water.”

The old man replied, “But there must be
tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really
be able to make much of a difference.”

The boy bent down, picked
up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean.
Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!” ~

~Adapted from The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley (1907 – 1977)~

This simple story serves as a good reminder that:

YOU are worth time and effort.

Maybe you can't help everyone, but you can help someone.

Goals can be achieved one mini step at a time.

I've
never known anyone to just wake up one day and magically be
stress-free. What I do know is that by committing to practice one simple
relaxation technique or tackling one little task on your to-do list
adds up day by day. There's a cumulative effect to managing stress.
Managing just a part of your stress every day amounts to feeling great.
There won't be a designated day when you'll say, "Yes, this was the day
when my stress got under control." But, after some practice, there will
come a realization that somewhere along the way, things got better.